HowToNetworking Tutorial

-- A simple HowTo project demonstrating network communication between a Microsoft Windows WCF endpoint and an iOS application. This tutorial source code is written in C# and Objective-C.

System Requirements

To install the platform on your computer the following requirements have to be met:

Microsoft Windows 7+

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010+ or MSBuild
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4
• WIFI - Firewall port 12345 open

Mac OS X 10.7+

• XCode 4.5+
• iOS Developer Account

Devices

• iPhone/iPod running iOS 6
• WIFI

Directory Map

• clients/ - (root directory for windows and ios clients)

  • windows/
    • Pusher/ (sender code)
  • ios/
    • Pusher/ (reciever code)

• server/ - (root directory for windows service)

  • PusherService/ - (WCF Service code)
  • PusherService.Host/ - (Console Application code)
  • References/ - (Assembly dependencies)

• Bin/ - (automatically created executing the msbuild.bat script)

• msbuild.bat - client and service compilation script

• LICENCES.md - (self explanatory)

• README.md - ( this :-) )

Compilation Instructions

Microsoft Windows

On Microsoft Windows systems you can open the solutions using Visual Studio and build from within or build from the commandline using the msbuild.bat file (recommended) .

Executing the MSBuild from commandline will produce a Bin directory with the client and server programs in the root directory.

• Pusher.exe - The client application used to prepare data to send to the iOS device
• PusherService.Host.exe - The server application used to facility communication between the windows client and the iOS device

Mac OS X

On Mac OS X systems you can open the project using XCode and attaching your iOS device to the computer in order to install the client app on the device. You must run application on the device in order to work properly

Demo

This demonstration uses a Microsoft Windows client to push content to an iOS client over WIFI. The communcation is unidirectional between the Windows client and the iOS client as described:

	  Sender			 ( One Way Communication )            Receiver
|-----------------|           |--------------|            |--------------|
										
| Windows Client  |=========> |  WCF Service |==========> |  iOS Device  | 

|-----------------|			  |--------------|            |--------------|

The Windows client provides the ability to send arbitrary text and images to an iOS device indirectly through a WCF endpoint. Before the iOS device can receive content it must register with the WCF endpoint's RESTful interface so the device can be discovered.

The following describes the steps you must follow in order to perform the demonstration.

Service Setup

1. On your Windows system, start the PusherService.Host.exe console application. After launching successfully, the console should display the current IP address and port the service is listening on. There are two ways you can execute this service and both require you to "Run as Administrator"
   • Option 1- Open PusherService Visual Studio the solution and click Debug / (F5)
   • Option 2- Execute PusherService.Host.exe on the commandline from the Bin directory on the root.

Client Setup

1. On your Mac OS X system, open the Pusher project in XCode and click Run or (Ctrl+Command+R)
2. After the app loads, click the button labeled Setup on toolbar then enter the IP Address that was displayed on the console of PusherService.Host.exe.
3. Next, on your Windows system run the Pusher.exe client. There are two ways you can execute the client:
   • Option 1- Open Pusher Visual Studio the solution and click Debug / (F5)
   • Option 2- Execute Pusher.exe on the commandline from the Bin directory on the root.
4. Thats it! Now start sending stuff.

Questions?

If you have any questions or comments about the tutorial please feel free to drop me a line :-).

Email: donellesanders@gmail.com Follow Me: @DonelleJr